The Missing Column

This should have appeared a few weeks back, but for whatever reason didn’t.

Did you know that there exists a 27 club? Club is perhaps the loosest term, because it is more a collection of musicians who die at the age of 27. I can’t imagine having much fun at a club full of dead musicians. Really I’ve been to plenty of clubs where there are lots of living musicians and not had fun.

Anyway inside this club you would find the corpses of Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones, Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison of the Doors. All of them dead, some from mysterious circumstances, but all have died at the age of 27. Don’t believe me? Have a look at Wikipedia – the 27 Club even has its own page.

The reason this is bothering me is because I turned 27 last week, which I’m sure probably is of no concern to most Evening Express readers. Until I was 27 all I had to bother me and make me feel like I’m wasting my life were the successful people younger than me like Brittney Spears. Now that I’m 27 I suddenly realised that if I died, in possibly mysterious circumstances, all I’d leave behind were some online columns for the Evening, a couple of very funny YouTube videos, two chapters of a children’s book and 47 editions of my really rather fantastic free to download podcast (www.originalfm.com/sunday-showcase-on-original-106-640406).

How does that compare to the back catalogue of Hendrix or Morrison? Robert Johnson, who pretty much invented modern music died when he was 27, admittedly he did sell his soul to the devil at some rural Mississippi crossroads at midnight so he could have mastery of the guitar. The only crossroads I’ve ever waited at at midnight was the one George Street and Hutcheon Street. And even then all I was waiting for was the Green Man so I could go to the bakers. Had the devil been there he could have had my soul for some stovies.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure if I done enough with my life. When my dad was 27 he was already married, mortgaged and had had me. I’m nowhere near marriage, don’t earn nearly enough to buy a house and have trouble feeding and watering myself.

The world has almost ended twice since I started this column. Once when the Large Hadron Collider was switched on and again now where we do seem only another bank collapse away from scratching each other’s eyes out for a loaf of bread. I think it’s a safe bet to say that in the next wee while the world is going to be taken over by robots built by mad men and in fairness I don’t expect to live. I’m not very good at fighting and no one cares enough about me to share their bin scraps. I’m going to spend the remaining time we have on the earth finishing my book. Granted there’ll be nobody around to read it but still it’s a legacy of sorts.

In a wee addendum to this posting I was talking about the 27 club with Producer Dave yesterday and he said, ‘at least if you were to kill yourself it would be understandable, unlike Kurt Cobain’.  Cheered me right up.

Loudmouth…

Aye, so I go and write a blog saying my column hasnae appeared on the Evening Express website and that it’s causing me to go and sit in a corner and cry.  Should probably have checked the website before I posted.

Anyway, if you want to read 450 words slagging off some celebs it’s up here http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/906359?UserKey=

Column 8

Hmm, last week’s column still hasn’t appeared in the Evening Express.  This means I have probably been fired.  MC who is my point of contact at the paoer denies this and says that it is a technical fault, but I know when I’m not wanted.  Anyway, this is what it said:

I saw someone steal something from my local shop the other day.  I mean he was the worst thief in the world, it was clear he had stolen something.  He just walked into the shop, went right up to the back and then put some ham, a ready meal and some milk under his jacket.  Being the good citizen that I am, I pointed this out to the bloke stacking the shelves.  He got up, called one of his colleagues over and pointed at the thief.  The thief saw them point and knowing the game was up, he made a run for the door.  Well actually he didn’t, he just walked a bit more quickly to the door.  However it was still a very tense moment.  All the shoppers had stopped shopping to watch how this would play out.

I personally was hoping the shop staff might go all Steven Segal on the guy – throw him to the ground, a bit of kung fu before taking back their stuff and saying something like ‘All shoplifters will be prosecuted – by my fist, asshole’.  They didn’t.

Instead they just stood there and watched him leave.  At one point one of them shook their heads. 

Alright, I understand that these guys are probably on the minimum wage and in fairness if I did their job I don’t think I would be willing to risk life and limb for the sake of CO-OP own brand corn beef hash, but surely it can’t be that easy to steal? 

I know that some stores have made it a bit more difficult to thieve.  As this paper reported a few weeks back the city’s Spars have started locking everyday goods up in display cases and then selling them beneath the counter.

We now have the slightly ridiculous situation where you can see hardcore-ish pornography on general display but the only way you can get a block of mild cheddar is to queue up and ask the shopkeeper what they’ve got under the counter. 

Perhaps thieving is the real reason we now have to pay for carrier bags.  Perhaps there has a been national run on carrier bags causing shortages or something. I mean it can’t be for the environment, surely?   No store would genuinely sell us tomatoes grown in Egypt which are then flown over to a depot in the South of England before being driven up to Aberdeen in a big truck and then say this bag costs 5p because we’re committed to ending global warming with a straight face?

I’ll end on a tip.  If you find yourself in the CO-OP you’ll see they no longer display carrier bags, but if you ask for one they’ll give it to you from under the counter.  I mean, you do feel a bit guilty, and other shoppers might look at you with a bit of disgust, but it’s only human.  We all do it.

new column up

New column up – go read.  Something a bit different.  Let me know.

http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/812476?UserKey=0

Column No 3…

http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/764156?UserKey=0

… is up and online for the next couple of days.  Go read.  Or don’t.  Actually please do.

weekend arrives…new column up…world saved

Yay, my life as Aberdeen’s answer to Carrie Bradshaw (copyright Lucy on Facebook) has continued.  Brand new column up about the almost true story of seeing a naked person.  It’s hilarious.  Possibly. 

http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/756780?UserKey=0

 Now I’m a published columnist I can almost even sympathise with Giles Coren and his attack on sub-editors.  I probably, definitely would sympathise if I knew what an unstressed syllable was.

This, by the way is the view from my window.  I thought the visual aid might add something to the column.  It doesn’t.

 

Update:  Apparently the link from the homepage is only going to be on the site when the blog’s updated – so for the sake of archivist I shall publish my column here as well.

Column 2 – 26th July 2008

 AM sitting at my desk trying to get work done but for some reason I just can’t concentrate.

I think it’s because I have given up smoking.

I am easily distracted and irritable.

On the way to my GP to ask for some help I knew I was doing the right thing.

Like all smokers I know how bad for me it is, and I know how expensive it is. Yet when the words, ‘I’d like to stop smoking, is there something you can prescribe to help me?’ left my mouth something at the back of my brain asked me what the hell I thought I was doing.

It was like trying to break up with a particularly grippy girlfriend.

The bits of my brain that had become addicted to nicotine told me that we just need to take things slowly and that it would be less fuss for me and the fags to stay together than it would be to break up.

Anyway, I have now one of those pretend cigarette shaped inhaler things.

I have it one hand while I stuff my face with sweets and biscuits to try to stop the cravings.

I stand up and pace about my flat before staring blankly out the window.

My eye is caught by movement in the flat opposite – it’s a lady walking about completely naked.

I’m a bit surprised because after living in this flat for a few years I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in the flat across the street, never mind someone in the nip.

I’m quite impressed by her confidence. I don’t think I could walk past a window in the middle of the day with everything on show. Perhaps this is a fault with me.

I should have more confidence in myself and in my body.

I’m not the worst looking man but I do continually beat myself up, I need to do something that will help get me the confidence of naked lady.

Unfortunately while I’m thinking this naked lady sees me staring right at her.

She rushes forwards to close her curtains, whilst giving me the dirtiest look.

I panic and try to wave in a way that says don’t worry I’m not a pervert, it’s just coincidence that I’m looking.

We could probably be friends.

Unfortunately I’m not sure that she understands, and with one look of utter disgust she closes the curtains.

I sit down absolutely shocked. I’m going to go to jail, everyone’s going to think I’m a peeping tom.

Two hours later there is a knock at the door. It’s a policeman. ‘Excuse me sir’. This is it, this it I’m going to prison.

‘Your neighbour downstairs was burgled over the weekend. I don’t suppose you saw anything’

I tell him that I didn’t but that he should ask the people who live in the flats opposite as they have quite a good view.

loudmouth?

My first ever column for the Evening Express has appeared online at www.eveningexpress.co.uk.  Although it’s incredibly exciting to see it, I should say right now it wasn’t me that chose the name Loudmouth Learmonth.  In fact when I saw the title it reminded me ever so slightly of primary school. 

Anyone who knows me would surely have thought shy, quite and awkward Learmonth would be so much more accurate.  Anyway go and have a look and boost up the figures so they don’t dump me.

Draft Colum 1: The Wedding

Wrote this, along with two others as a draft column for local paper.  Something might come of it…

The Wedding

It seems that I am now at an age where I spend every other weekend desperately trying not to throw up the mixture of rich cake, mass cooked hotel chicken and over priced hotel lager as I strip the willow in the function suite of one of our cities fine hotels.

 

The wedding I was at this Saturday was the second of at least five before summer starts.  It stood out because it was my first humanist wedding.  Expertly guided by former Aberdeen City Councillor Pamela Macdonald, the bride walked up the aisle (or whatever the equivalent is in the St Leonards Hotel in Stonehaven) to the Hobbit’s theme from Lord Of The Rings and then, once married , man and wife left to the theme tune from Star Wars.  Great fun, although I think anything as informal as that at my wedding would cause my good Presbyterian grandfather heart problems.

 

Here’s the thing, I’m not married.  I am in no rush to get married and neither (so she tells me) is my girlfriend.  The only person who thinks I should get married is my mother, who is, I think desperate for grandchildren.  Whenever I tell my mum that I’m going to a wedding she gives me a look.  It’s the same look I received as a child while watching TV and my mum told me of the children of her friends who had got top marks in maths or become under 10 Scottish egg and spoon race champion

 

What worries me about getting married means is that I will not be able to play the field.  There will be no Russell Brand escapades for me.  Surely I’m too young to commit myself to one woman?  I am at my sexual peak, in fact the amount of junk food I eat, the amount of booze I drink is all going to come back to haunt me.  I will never look this good, or at least healthy again.

 

My problem is that I am a big sap.  Easily overwhelmed by emotion.  At one recent wedding the bride and groom had written their own vows.  I can’t say that I know the couple that well but I was hopelessly destroyed by the emotion of the whole thing.  I find myself now welling up at the flimsiest rom-coms or soap opera storylines.  There is clearly an emotional black hole in my heart.

 

On our way back from that wedding, as we walked up George Street the girlfriend and I couldn’t help but talk of what our wedding would be like.  She has decided, despite years of atheism that she would like it in a church.  And then the reception would be in a grand hotel and 200 of our close personal friends and family would come along.  There will be a ceilidh band and a DJ.  I, drunk, agreed before realising that we were talking about our wedding as if it was actually happening.  At that point I dropped to my knees outside Party Mania on George Street and asked if she’d marry me.  I was a bit boozy but I’m fairly sure she said no.